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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 8, No. 205, Part I, 29 October 2004 Move afoot to eliminate student draft deferments Many within the government and the military are urging that all military-service deferments should be eliminated in order to overcome the demographic crisis facing the military, "Krasnaya zvezda" reported on 27 October. Under the proposed system, which reportedly was developed by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, every 18-year-old male would be required to serve two years in the military before being able to enter an institution of higher education. According to the daily, in 2003 1.3 million young men, about 36 percent of the available conscripts, had student deferments. "The conscription of students into the military will not be the undoing of Russian science," Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko was quoted as saying. "I know people who served in the military in wartime, returned [to civilian life], and went on to receive Nobel prizes." Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has said that the number of potential conscripts must be doubled if the military is to achieve its goal of reducing the conscription term from two years to one. RC Twin car bombs injure 13 in Russia's Chechnya 31 Oct 2004 09:13:28 GMT Source: Reuters GROZNY, Russia, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Two car bombs injured 13 people in the capital of Russia's Chechnya on Sunday, medical staff and officials said. The first explosion hit a convoy of cars carrying pro- Moscow police at 7.40 a.m. (0430 GMT). The second hit the main city hospital 45 minutes later as the wounded were brought in, injuring civilians including a doctor. The powerful second bomb smashed windows at the hospital, destroying the car that carried it and damaging other cars. "Some people are severely injured, but there is no threat to their lives. All 13 are in the ninth city hospital, where the explosion took place," said Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the Russian military command in Chechnya, where Russia has been fighting separatist rebels for a decade. Rebels frequently lay mines on the roads of the mountainous region, targeting military and police convoys. Russian soldiers are killed almost daily, and automatic gunfire echoes around Grozny and other towns at night. A member of the "kadyrovtsy" -- a pro-Moscow paramilitary force made up mainly of former rebels and led by the son of assassinated local leader Akhmad Kadyrov -- said the Sunday bombings were part of a feud with Islamic extremists. "We are battling them, and this feud does not stop here," said the heavily-armed man, who identified himself only by his nickname 'Bely', as he stood outside the hospital. Chechen Warlord Pledges More Attacks on Civilians Sunday, October 31, 2004 By Oliver Bullough MOSCOW (Reuters) - The rebel warlord who masterminded last month's Beslan school siege says Chechen attacks on civilians will go on as long as Russian troops abuse human rights in the separatist region of Chechnya. Shamil Basayev, who has a multi-million dollar bounty on his head, said in the interview published on Sunday that capturing rebel leaders such as him would not help Russia to victory since Chechen rebels operated in small independent groups. Basayev has ordered the most audacious attacks on Russia in the 10 years of the Chechen war. His fighters held the school in Beslan with 1,200 hostages for more than two days in early September before Russian security forces stormed the building. More than 330 hostages died, about half of them children. He was a key commander in defending Chechnya when Vladimir Putin, who was then prime minister and is now president, sent troops back into Chechnya in 1999, but his willingness to attack civilians has split his forces from those of nominal rebel head Aslan Maskhadov. "If Putin begins to abide by international law, then automatically we will do so," he said in comments carried on rebel Web sites. "We are ready to abide by international law, this would even suit us by protecting civilians. But unlike President Maskhadov, we do not want to fight in such a way unilaterally." Troops die daily in clashes with rebel forces. Activists accuse Russian forces of massive rights abuses in kidnapping and murdering Chechens suspected of links to the rebels. Russia denies this. A manhunt for the top leaders has so far been fruitless, and Basayev said his capture would not halt the war anyway. "Our warriors are self-sufficient, they fight independently, no one needs to teach them anything," he said. "I just need to send letters and my personal participation is not needed, it is enough to meet once or twice a year. In 2003 I was in Chechnya for only two weeks, and most warriors did not notice. This autonomy is I think our greatest success." He spent some time in another Caucasus region but it was not clear where he spent the rest of 2003. Russia has promised a $10 million reward for anyone who helps capture Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov, the nominal leader of the Chechen resistance who was also blamed by Russia for the Beslan attack. Basayev said Maskhadov had no role in planning the attack. "I met Maskhadov at the end of June, I gave him captured weapons and material, I wanted to find a common approach to the methods of fighting the war but did not manage to." And, he said, the traditional hospitality of the Caucasus meant the rebel leaders would always be protected from Russian capture even in the houses of their enemies. "The people strongly supports us, not only in Chechnya but all across the Caucasus ... I can, at a difficult time, get help and be received in almost any house," he said. "I have never doubted that I can stay somewhere." Chechenpress Statement by Ahmed Zakayev on behalf of the Government of the ChRI In connection with the statement of Shamil Basayev about his intention to continue with terrorist acts against Russian citizens, I am authorized to declare that the Government of the ChRI categorically rejects this position and decisively condemns hostage-taking and murder of innocent citizens. The intentional targetting of civilians is a war crime and liable for responsibility within the framework of the Geneva Conventions. The circumstance that the Russian side systematically violates them cannot be a basis for committing crimes by our side. Retributions against Russian murderers and their accomplices among the national traitors are an unconditional part of our struggle, but they must be directed against the guilty and not the innocent. The Chechen soldiers and commanders subordinated to the legal government of the ChRI are under strict orders to limit acts of sabotage to legitimate targets and not to participate in terrorist acts. We regret civilian losses which can happen in the course of our operations, and we take all measures in order to minimize them. Shamil Basayev is naive if the believes that terror against innocent civilians will be able to force the Russian authorities to a political settlement. Putin is as indifferent toward the suffering of his people as he is to the tragedy of the Chechens. The path toward peace and independence of Chechnya lies in cooperation with the part of the Russian society that rejects the criminal policy of its government and wants peace. The new threats of terrorist acts don't contribute to an advance along this path. During the next weeks a meeting will take place in Europe between members of the Chechen leadership and a delegation of the Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, who have brought forward a new peace initiative. We put serious hopes into this process, but we know that the criminal regime in the Kremlin is preparing provocations with the purpose to disrupt the talks. We hope that all Chechens who really want peace and independence will apply restraint and common sense and refrain from irresponsible activities and appearances. A. Zakayev, London, 30.10.04 Chechenpress, the Department of Government Information, 01.11.04 http://chechenpress.com/news/2004/11/01/05.shtml [Unauthorized translation by N.S.] Ethnic tensions and rights abuses on rise in the Caucasus since Beslan school siege By Arkady Ostrovsky Published: November 1 2004 At 8.40am, on October 2-a month after 330 people died in a school siege in Beslan - a Russian military jeep pulled up outside the Mayskoe refugee camp near the border between North Ossetia, where the tragedy took place, and the neighbouring Muslim republic of Ingushetia. The refugee camp, although on North Ossetian territory, is filled with Ingush - a small ethnic population akin to Chechens. Four armed men, one of them in a military uniform, knocked on the door of Cabin 77, where 24-year old Magomed Khamkhoev lived with his mother. They bundled Mr Khamkhoev into the back seat of the jeep and drove towards a nearby forest where they beat him for several hours, leaving him concussed, with a damaged kidney and spleen. "They told me they were interested in Beslan and that I should confess that I was taking part in the school siege," Mr Khamkhoev says. When he tried to explain that he was at home during the siege, they told him that a lot of dead bodies were found in this forest and his might be next. "They told me to sign some papers, but when I asked to read them, they beat me more." Several hours later he was dumped outside the refugee camp where he has spent the past 12 years of his life - since the last flare-up of hostilities between the Ingush and North Ossetian people - living in makeshift cabins without heating or water, along with 1,200 people like him. The incident is just one example of the ethnic tensions and human rights abuses that have dogged this volatile region for years and have become more intense since the hostage crisis in Beslan. There are many historic and current factors at play in the North Caucasus but the main one is Russia's 10-year-long campaign in Chechnya: its consequences are echoing across the region. "Russia does not have a policy in the North Caucasus. Its only policy here is the war in Chechnya," says Alexander Dzadziev of Network for Ethnic Monitoring and Early Warning, an international think-tank. But no Russian official, including President Vladimir Putin, would accept that the school siege in Beslan was the result of Russia's war in Chechnya; instead, they blame international terrorism. At the same time Moscow's political pundits close to the Kremlin have been quick to highlight the ethnic tension between North Ossetia and Ingushetia. Yet, despite their worst prediction neither the Ossetians nor the Ingush have taken up arms against each other. "In the Caucasus, revenge cannot be taken against just anyone - it must be addressed to someone who perpetrated the crime or to his family," says Mayebeg Tuaev, who lost his daughter in Beslan. However, suggestions of an ethnic conflict have fallen on fertile ground and stirred up the deep prejudices and grievances on both sides harking back to Joseph Stalin, often described as ethnic Ossetian. In 1944 Stalin, whose statue was recently put up in the main street of Beslan, deported the entire Ingush and Chechen population - in cattle trains - to Kazakhstan and handed over part of the Ingush territory to North Ossetia. Almost half of the Chechen and Ingush population died. When the Ingush survivors returned in 1957 they found Ossetians living in their houses in the disputed Prigorodny district. In 1991 Boris Yeltsin, then Russian president, signed a law restoring territorial rights of the Ingush. But the law made no mention of the mechanism of "territorial rehabilitation" and a few months later a bloody seven-day conflict unfolded in which almost 600 people died on both sides. Up to 60,000 Ingush were forced out of North Ossetia and found themselves in refugee camps. Only 12,000 have been resettled. The Beslan tragedy has driven the North Ossetians and the Ingush further apart. The border between the two republics is hard to get through. Even the towns and villages where they have been living together for 10 years remain segregated. In Chermen village, Ingush and Ossetian houses are divided by a buffer zone; children go to separate schools and speak different language. Worse still, on the Ingushetian side of the border torture, kidnappings and killings by Russian security services and police are becoming widespread. Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya of the Memorial human rights organisation says: "Ingushetia is becoming as unsafe as Chechnya. We are witnessing a spill-over effect from the war." She says Russian federal forces and local security services are perpetrating similar human rights abuses in Ingushetia and by doing so radicalising the population: "The instances of torture, beatings, disappearances have increased notably in the past six months." With unemployment at 80 per cent, no economy to speak of, and regular human rights abuses, there is serious concern that Ingushetia could become a breeding ground for a generation of disenfranchised and radicalised people. "If you don't have a job, if you don't have any prospects, if your relatives and friends have been killed or kidnapped - you are perfect recruiting material for extremists," says Ms Sokiryanskaya.